Discharge from Acute Medicine: Patients' and Carers' Views
Research type
Research Study
Full title
An exploration of the issues which underpin discharge practice and risk assessment of patients being discharged from an Acute Medicine Unit in a large NHS Foundation Trust - an explanatory case study.
IRAS ID
187755
Contact name
Liz Lees
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 4 months, 31 days
Research summary
Hospital emergency departments (EDs) are incredibly busy places; in 2012/13, 18.3 million patients were admitted to hospital via an ED. Having efficient processes in place to manage patient throughput is therefore essential. Acute Medicine Units (AMUs) are key contributors to this; AMUs assess, admit and discharge patients with medical conditions who attend hospital as an emergency. Integral to the work of AMUs is discharge planning, including ‘risk assessment’ (ie deciding whether a patient can safely be sent home or needs to be transferred elsewhere).
Currently, there is no standard approach to assessing patients’ readiness for discharge from emergency care, with twenty-seven discharge policies nationally; inconsistent staff compliance with risk assessment policies & procedures and limited patient engagement in risk assessment.
The main aim of this study is to better understand the process of discharging patients from an AMU.
The overall research design is an Explanatory Case Study (Yin 1994), an approach widely used to study ‘real-world’ issues in their natural context, using multiple data sources. This application relates to one data source, namely interviews with patients (N approx. 20)and carers (N approx. 20).
The study will be based in a large AMU in the West Midlands. Semi-structured interviews (approx. 1 hour duration) will be conducted to explore patients'/carers' experiences of the discharge process from the AMU; gain insight into how they felt any 'risks' pertaining to the discharge were assessed by AMU staff and establish the extent to which they felt they were involved in this assessment process.
Data will be analysed using the Framework approach (Ritchie and Spencer 1984), a qualitative data analysis method which allows identification of themes and comparison of these across participants and data sources.
Study findings will facilitate improvements in service delivery locally and nationally; contribute to policy development and facilitate development/implementation of risk assessment tools.
REC name
London - Bromley Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/LO/1586
Date of REC Opinion
4 Sep 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion